Goethean Science

On-line since: 16th February, 2002

Notes

Whoever declares from the very beginning that such a goal is
unattainable will never arrive at an understanding of the Goethean
views of nature; on the other hand, whoever undertakes to study them
without preconceptions, and leaves this question open, will
certainly answer it affirmatively at the end. Doubts could very well
arise for many a person through several remarks Goethe himself made,
such as the following one, for example: “... without
presuming to want to discover the primal mainsprings of nature's
workings, we would have directed our attention to the
manifestation of the forces by which the plant gradually transforms
one and the same organ” But with Goethe such statements never
direct themselves against the possibility, in principle, of knowing
the being of things; he is only cautious enough about the
physical-mechanical conditions underlying the organism not to draw
any conclusions too quickly, since he knew very well that such
questions can only be resolved in the course of time.

We do not mean in any way to say that Goethe has never been
understood at all in this regard. On the contrary, we repeatedly
take occasion in this very edition to point to a number of men who
seem to us to carry on and elaborate Goethean ideas. Belonging among
them are such names as: Voigt, Nees von Esenbeck, d'Alton (senior
and junior), Schelver, C.G. Carus, and Martius, among others. But
these men in fact built up their systems upon the foundation of the
views laid down in the writings of Goethe, and, precisely about
them, one cannot say that they would have arrived at their concepts
even without Goethe, whereas to be sure, contemporaries of
Goethe — Josephi in Göttingen, for example — did
come independently upon the intermaxillary bone, and Oken upon the
vertebral theory.

See Poetry and Truth, part 2, book 6

All quotations from Faust are from George Madison Priest's
translation.

“I would gladly send you a little botanical essay, if only it
were already written.” (Letter to Knebel, April 2, 1785)

Geschichte meines botanischen Studiums

Italian Journey, October 8, 1786

Italian Journey, September 8, 1786

It is certainly unnecessary to state that the modern theory of
evolution should not at all be placed in doubt by this, or that its
assertions should be curtailed by it; on the contrary, only it
provides a secure foundation for them.

What we have here is not so much the theory of evolution of those
natural scientists who base themselves on sense-perceptible
empiricism, but far more the theoretical foundations, the
principles, that are laid into the foundations of Darwinism;
especially by the Jena school, of course, with Haeckel in the
vanguard; in this first-class mind, Darwin's teachings, in all their
one-sidedness, have certainly found their consequential development.

We will have occasion at various places to demonstrate in what sense
these individual parts relate to the whole. If we wanted to borrow a
concept of modern science for such working together of living
partial entities into one whole, we might take for example that of a
“stock” in zoology. This is a kind of statehood of
living entities, an individual that itself further consists of
independent individuals, an individual of a higher sort.

“An exquisite pleasure has been granted me; I have made an
anatomical discovery that is important and beautiful.”

“I have found — not silver or gold, but something that
gives me inexpressible joy — the os intermaxillare in
man!”

“Morphologische Hefte”

Until now, one has assumed that Camper received the treatise
anonymously. It came to him in a roundabout way: Goethe sent it
first to Sömmerring, who sent it to Merck, who was supposed to
get it to Camper. But among the letters of Merck to Camper (which
are not yet published, and whose originals are to be found in the
Library of the Netherlands Society for the Progress of Medicine in
Amsterdam), there is one letter of January 17, 1785 containing the
following passage (I quote it verbatim): “Mr. Goethe,
celebrated poet, intimate counselor of the Duke of Weimar, has just
sent me an osteological specimen that is supposed to be sent to you
after Mr. Sömmerring has seen it ... It is a small treatise on
the intermaxillary bone that teaches, us among other things, the
truth that the manatee has four incisors and that the camel has two
of them.” A letter of March 10, 1785, in which the name Goethe
is again expressly present, states that Merck will shortly send the
treatise on to Camper: “I will have the honor of sending you
the osteological specimen of Mr. von Goethe, my friend ...” On
April 28, 1785, Merck expressed the hope that Camper received the
thing and again the name “Goethe” is present. Thus there
is no doubt that Camper knew who the author was.

Anatomie der Säugetiere

Vom Baue des menschlichen Körpers

Handbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie

“Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanze
zu erklären”

A few philosophers maintain that we can indeed trace the phenomena
of the sense world back to their original elements (forces), but
that we can explain these just as little as we can explain the
nature of life. On the other hand, one can say that those elements
are simple, i.e., cannot themselves be composed of still
simpler elements. But to trace them, in all their simplicity,
further back, to explain them, is an impossibility, not because our
capacity for knowledge is limited, but rather because these
elements rest upon themselves; they are present for us in all
their immediacy; they are self-contained, cannot be traced hack to
anything else.

This is precisely the contrast between an organism and a machine. In
a machine, everything is the interaction of its parts. Nothing real
exists in the machine itself other than this interaction. The
unifying principle, which governs the working together of the parts,
is lacking in the object itself, and lies outside of it in the head
of its builder as a plan. Only the most extreme short-sightedness
can deny that the difference between an organism and a mechanism
lies precisely in the fact that the principle causing the
interrelationship of the parts is, with respect to a mechanism,
present only externally (abstractly), whereas with respect to an
organism, this principle gains real existence within the thing
itself. Thus the sense-perceptible components of an organism also do
not then appear out of one another as a mere sequence, but rather as
though governed by that inner principle, as though resulting from
such a principle that is no longer sense-perceptible. In this
respect it is no more sense-perceptible than the plan in the
builder's head that is also there only for the mind; this principle
is, in fact, essentially that plan, only that plan has now drawn
into the inner being of the entity and no longer carries out its
activities through the mediation of a third party — the
builder — but rather does this directly itself

Readers familiar with German philosophy in English will remember
that the conventional translation of Verstand is
“understanding.” — Ed.

Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft)

Certain attributes of God within the things.

Von den göttlichen Dingen and ihrer Offenbarung ( 1811 )

The fruit arises through the growth of the lower part of the pistil,
the ovary (1); it represents a later stage of the pistil and can
therefore only be sketched separately. With the fruiting, the last
expansion occurs. The life of the plant differentiates itself into
an organ — the actual fruit — that is closing itself
off, and into the seeds; in the fruit, all the factors of the
phenomenon are united, as it were; it is mere phenomenon, it
estranges itself from life, becomes a dead product. In the seed are
concentrated all the inner essential factors of the plant's life.
From it a new plant arises. It has become almost entirely ideal; the
phenomenon is reduced to a minimum in it.

Italian Journey, December 1,1786.

In modern natural science one usually means by “archetypal
organism” (Urorganismus) an archetypal cell (archetypal
cytode), i.e., a simple entity standing at the lowest level of
organic development. One has in mind here a quite specific, actual,
sense-perceptibly real entity. When one speaks in the Goethean sense
about the archetypal organism, then one does not have this in mind
but rather that essence (being), that formative entelechical
principle which brings it about that this archetypal cell is an
organism. This principle comes to manifestation in the simplest
organism just as in the most perfect one, only differently
developed. It is the animalness in the animal; it is that through
which an entity is an organism. Darwin presupposes it from the
beginning; it is there, is introduced, and then he says of it that
it reacts in one way or another to the influences of the outer
world. For him, it is an indefinite X; Goethe seeks to explain this
indefinite X.

Goethe often experienced this unconscious behavior of his as
dullness.

Vorstellung is often translated as “representation”
in philosophical works. — Ed.

This separation is indicated by the solid lines.

This is represented by the dotted lines.

Meaning: that it exists — Ed.

Der Versuch als Vermittler von Subjekt und Objekt

Later footnote of the author: “In my introduction to the
thirty-fourth volume, I said that the essay appears, unfortunately,
to have been lost that could serve as the best support to Goethe's
views on experience, experiment, and scientific knowledge. It has
not been lost, however, and has come to light in the above form in
the Goethe archives. It bears the date January 15, 1798, and was
sent to Schiller on the seventeenth. It represents a continuation of
the essay
The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object.
I took the train of thought of his essay from the correspondence
between Goethe and Schiller and presented it in the above-mentioned
introduction in exactly the same way in which it is now found to be
in the newly discovered essay. With respect to content nothing is
added by this essay to what I expressed there; on the other hand,
however, the view I had won from Goethe's other work; about his
method and way of knowing was confirmed in every respect.

An essay suite worth reading is Dr. Adolf Harpf's
Goethe and Schopenhauer
(Philosophische Monatshefte, 1885). Harpf, who
has also already written an excellent treatise on
Goethe's Principle of Knowledge
(Goethes Erkenntnisprinzip,
Philos. Monatshefte, 1884), shows the agreement between the
“immanent dogmatism” of Schopenhauer and the objective
knowledge of Goethe. Harpf, who is himself a follower of
Schopenhauer, did not discover the principle difference between
Goethe and Schopenhauer that we characterized above. Nevertheless,
his reflections are quite worthy of attention.

Usually translated as “representations” in English
versions of Schopenhauer's work — Ed.

Philosophie des Unbewussten

Philosophische Fragen der Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1885)

This does not mean to say that the concept of love receives no
attention in Hartmann's ethics. He dealt with this concept both
phenomenologically and metaphysically
(see The Moral Consciousness,
Das sittliche Bewusstsein). But he does
not consider love to be the last word in ethics. Self-sacrificing,
loving devotion to the world process does not seem to Hartmann as
something ultimate but rather only as a means of deliverance
from the unrest of existence and of regaining our lost, blissful
peace.

Geologische Probleme und Versuch ihrer Auflösung

See the essay:
“Significant Help from One Single Intelligent Word”
(“Bedeutende Fördernis
durch ein einziges geistreiches Wort”)

“The Overcoming of Scientific Materialism”
(“Die Überwindung des Wissenschaftlichen
Materialismus”); a
lecture held in the third general session of the meeting of the
Society of German Scientists and Physicians in Lübeck on
September 20, 1895. (Leipzig 1895)

Goethe's views stand in the sharpest possible opposition to Kantian
philosophy. The latter takes it start from the belief that the world
of mental pictures is governed by the laws of the human spirit and
that therefore everything brought from outside to meet this world
can be present in this world only as a subjective reflection. Man
does not perceive the “in-itself” of things, but rather
the phenomenon that arises through the fact that the things affect
him and that he connects these effects according to the laws of his
intellect and reason. Kant and the Kantians have no inkling of the
fact that the essential being of the things speaks through this
reason. Therefore the Kantian philosophy could never hold any
significance for Goethe. When he acquired for himself some of Kant's
principles, he gave them a completely different meaning than they
have in the teachings of their originator. It is clear, from a note
that only became known after the opening of the Goethe archives in
Weimar, that Goethe was very well aware of the antithesis between
his world view and the Kantian one. For him, Kant's basic error lies
in the fact that he “regards the subjective ability to
know as an object itself and, sharply indeed but not entirely
correctly, he distinguishes the point where subjective and
objective meet.” Subjective and objective meet when man
joins together into the unified being of things what the
outer world expresses and what can be heard by his inner being.
Then, however, the antithesis between subjective and objective
entirely ceases to exist; it disappears in this unified reality. I
have already indicated this on
page 167 ff.
of this book. Now K.
Vorländer, in the first number of “Kant Studies,”
directs a polemic against what I wrote there. He finds that my view
about the antithesis between the Goethean and the Kantian world
conception is “strongly one-sided at best and stands in
contradiction to Goethe's own statements,” and is due to a
“complete misunderstanding on my part of Kant's transcendental
methods.” Vorländer has no inkling of the world view in
which Goethe lived. It would be utterly pointless for me to enter
into polemics with him, because we speak a different language. The
fact that he never knows what my statements mean shows how clear his
thinking is. For example, I make a comment on the following
statement of Goethe: “As soon as the human being becomes aware
of the objects around him, he regards them with respect to himself,
and justifiably so. For, his whole destiny depends upon whether he
likes or dislikes them, whether they attract or repel him, whether
they help or harm him. This entirely natural way of looking at
things and of judging them seems to be as easy as it is necessary
... Those people take on a far more difficult task whose active
drive for knowledge strives to observe the objects of nature in
themselves and in their relationships to each other; they seek
out and investigate what is and not what pleases.” My comment
on this is as follows: “This shows how Goethe's world view is
the exact polar opposite of the Kantian one. For Kant, there is
absolutely no view of things as they are in themselves, but only of
how they appear with respect to us. Goethe considers this
view to be a quite inferior way of entering into a relationship with
things.” Vorländer's response to this is: “These
words of Goethe are not intended to express anything more than, in
an introductory way, the trivial difference between what is pleasant
and what is true. The researcher should seek out ‘what is
and not what pleases.’ It is advisable for someone like
Steiner — who dares to say that this latter, in fact very
inferior, way of entering into a relationship with things is Kant's
way — to first make clear to himself the basic concepts of
Kant's teachings: the difference between a subjective and an
objective sensation, for example, which is described in such
passages as section three of the
Critique of the Power of Judgment.”
Now, as is clear from my statements, I did not
at all say that that way of entering into a relationship with things
is Kant's way, but rather that Goethe does not find Kant's
understanding of the relationship between subject and object to
correspond to the relationship in which man stands toward things
when he wants to know how they are in themselves. Goethe is of the
view that the Kantian definition does not correspond to human
knowing, but only to the relationship into which man enters with
things when he regards them with respect to his pleasure or
displeasure. Someone who can misunderstand a statement the way
Vorländer does would do better to spare himself the trouble of
giving advice to other people about their philosophical education,
and first acquire for himself the ability to learn to read a
sentence correctly. Anyone can look for Goethe quotes and bring them
together historically; but Vorländer, in any case, cannot
interpret them in the spirit of the Goethean world view.

The following story shows how little understanding is present in
professional philosophers today both for ethical views and for an
ethic of inner freedom and of individualism in general. In 1892, in
an essay for “Zukunft” (No. 5), I spoke out for a
strictly individualistic view of ethics. Ferdinand Tönnies in
Kiel responded to this essay in a brochure: “‘Ethical
Culture’ and its Retinue. Nietzsche Fools in the ‘Future’
and in the ‘Present’“ (Berlin 1893). He presented
nothing except the main principles of philistine morality in the
form of philosophical formulas. Of me, however, he says that I could
have found “no worse Hermes on the path to Hades than
Friedrich Nietzsche.” It struck me as truly humorous that
Tönnies, in order to condemn me, presents several of Goethe's
Aphorisms in Prose.
He has no inkling of the fact that if I
did have a Hermes, it was not Nietzsche, but rather Goethe. I have
already shown on
page 149 ff.
of this book the connections between
the ethics of inner freedom and Goethe's ethics. I would not have
mentioned this worthless brochure if it were not symptomatic of the
misunderstanding of Goethe's world view that holds sway in
professional philosophical circles.